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That's what I've been saying, and it's what Frankie did, although in the link to his build, he used the Mato cast attached to a Tamiya welded. But he has also used Heng Long welded hulls.
As for whether you can do it, only you can answer that as I don't know your modelling skills.

Oh ok, thank you for your help, i think i will use a heng long welded and a mato cast when i get round to it.

For the price, and not sure about future availability, it may be wise to get the Heng Long hull and turret sooner rather than later. Same applies to the Mato hull.

As Pathfinder notes right at the start of his build, firefly's were never built on the big hatch A1 hull... And I can't recommend trying to graft a resin hull front onto a plastic rear - did that with the old Profiline kit, the 2 peices part company everytime the sun catches the damn thing...

Anyway, what Spiky does need from Nick is his low bustle 75mm turret, this is currently 65$ plus shipping (he's doing 2 for me at ths very moment - $30 shipping for the pair, 1 might cost less on its own?) The Tamiya and HL versions are both the later high bustle variant which wasn't used (possibly for technical reasons due to differences in the turret?). Woz's Shapeways store is probably your best bet for the rest of the conversion parts, such as the loaders hatch, mantlet etc.

Mr Front, Nick only makes two Sherman hulls, the small hatch M4A3 and the large hatch M4A1. Although he does make a firefly low bustle turret, along with the old low bustle short barrel 75mm single hatch turret and an open M36 Jackson turret. And I believe the E8 fury turret.
Also to note, Nicks turrets and hulls are made to use Tamiya turret rings etc, because he produced them as replacements for the Tamiya kit parts. Therefore they won't be a straight swap with Heng Long or Mato parts.
Nicks large hatch M4A1 cast hull is very similar to the Mato one, just more accurate and better looking.

As for large hatch fireflies, I doubt very much if they ever were on any version of welded firefly. But they were on the composite/hybrid, they only produced about 50 small hatch composites, the rest were large hatch which were produced from 1943 onwards. Therefore a large hatch composite firefly is more than feasible, especially as there is more period photos available of large hatch composites than small hatch.

Son of a gun-ner wrote:he does make a firefly low bustle turret

I stand corrected - I had no idea he did that as well

He also does an excellent M4A3E2 upper hull and turret

Cool, didn't know he made that hull.

Mind you, when I was in contact with him, we were discussing what he produced that us Brits would have had. And yes, I had a rather large order from him at the time

At one point he indicated to me that he was thinking about doing a small hatch M4A1, but I'm guessing that never happened

Tiger6 wrote:At one point he indicated to me that he was thinking about doing a small hatch M4A1, but I'm guessing that never happened

Sadly not, I was after one myself, I got my order from him about three months ago.
There is one on shapeways that Woz does.

I think Ludwig does one as well? Eitherway I have too many Shermans now already